THE ARMENIAN ASSEMBLY OF AMERICA TESTIMONY REGARDING GENOCIDE AND THE RULE OF LAW

ArmRadio.am
07.02.2007 16:21

"As we reflect on the continuing problem of genocide, certainly the
20th century stands out as one marred by mass killings on a scale
never before seen in history. From the Armenian Genocide at the turn
of the century, which the world easily forgot but for Adolf Hitler,
who infamously invoked it by saying: "Who, after all, speaks today
of the annihilation of the Armenians?" as he unleashed the horrors of
World War II and the Holocaust – to the crimes of the Khmer Rouge in
Cambodia, the atrocities in Rwanda, and now in the 21st century, the
decimation of the population of Darfur, the trail of crimes against
humanity painfully continues," said Executive Director of the Armenian
Assembly of America Bruan Ardouny, speaking in the Human Rights and
the Law Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Ardouny noted also that "The absence of international law to hold the
perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide accountable was dishearteningly
evident at the end of World War I. But for a brief series of domestic
trials in Turkey, which were too soon discontinued, the organizers
of the Armenian atrocities avoided responsibility and escaped
judgment. This very lack of accountability to one’s own nation and
to the international community for having committed mass atrocities
propelled a true giant in the defense of human rights, Raphael Lemkin,
to ask why a murderer may be charged for a single crime, while a mass
murderer is excused. It would take one more genocide for mankind to
find the sense of outrage that is now embodied in the U.N. Convention
on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, of which the
United States is a signatory. The law was silent in 1915 when Armenians
by the hundreds of thousands were sent on death marches, subjected
to massacres, and starved to death in the parched desert. While the
law was silent, leading voices of conscience in the United States
and elsewhere around the world were far more vocal.

Newspapers across America carried chilling accounts under headlines
such as " Armenians Are Sent to Perish in the Desert" and "1,500,000
Armenians Starve" In his speech the Executive Director noted:
"Against the background of overwhelming evidence that would have
been sufficient to prosecute any number of the criminals involved in
the Armenian Genocide, today the Armenian-American community instead
struggles against the unremitting forces of denial that want to bury
the past, distort history, and erase the memory of this crime against
humanity. To quote Professor Deborah Lipstadt of Emory University,
who personally confronted the problem in court, "Denial of genocide
is the final stage of genocide; it is what Elie Wiesel has called ‘a
double killing.’ " It seeks to demonize the victims and rehabilitate
the perpetrators."

"Descendents of the survivors of the Armenian Genocide in their
respective countries of residence have appealed to their governments
to stop this denial and to re-affirm the historic record on its
occurrence. For them, as for us in the Armenian Assembly of America,
the affirmation of history by our lawmaking institutions is the best
hope available to respond to the power of denial with the decency
of the law and the principles that protect and defend basic human
rights. Denial also subverts the essence of the rule of law. It
is a form of violation, a violation of the right to honor the
memory of the victims of genocide without facing the abuses and
indignity of denial. For this very reason the Armenian- American
community with every Congress has urged legislators to re-affirm this
history, and most especially the very honorable American record of
humanitarian response to the Armenian Genocide. Therefore, we remain
deeply concerned that the Department of State, despite the very
evidence in its own archives, has consistently opposed Congressional
resolutions that properly identify the mass killing of the Armenians
as genocide. This policy is not consistent with the American record
on human rights and flies in the face of past and current policy to
expose those who commit atrocities and to bring them to justice. Most
regrettably, Congress and the Department of State need to be reminded
that denial is not a problem of semantics alone. A mere two weeks ago
a terrible crime was committed in Turkey that reminded the world how
high can be the price of fighting denial."

It is extremely unfortunate that one of the most prominent figures of
the Armenian community in Turkey was prosecuted under Article 301. The
Turkish courts dismissed all other cases filed under Article 301 with
the exception of Hrant Dink, one of the most vocal advocates of human
rights and tolerance in Turkey.

In a country of 71 million people, the representative of the Armenian
minority (approximately 60,000) in Turkey, which numbers less that
a tenth of one percent of the population, the remnant of a people
once counted at over 2 million, happens to be the individual meted
punishment and public condemnation for speaking about events in
history that occurred more than 90 years ago," Mr. Ardouny declared.